FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings shows a conventional circuit of a non-linear, dispersive transmission line in the form of a solid state pulsed power circuit operable to produce powerful radio frequency signals in short electrical pulses. Such lines are a variant of the inductance/capacitance ladder transmission line to which non-linearity and dispersive characteristics are added. FIG. 1 shows six sections of the conventional transmission line which could be made up of as many as 100 or 200 sections. An input pulse injected at the left hand side of the line at the capacitor 1 with a value C.sup.1 would propagate to the right hand side of the line. Additional capacitors 2 each having a value C.sub.0 and inductors 3 each having a value L.sub.0 form the primary elements of the transmission line. Saturable magnetic material is placed in each inductor 3 which causes the inductors to be non-linear. The capacitors 1 form coupling capacitors used capacitively to link every second cell in the line thus giving the line additional dispersive characteristics. As a result of adding non-linearity and dispersion to the transmission line an electrical pulse which propagates along the line is distorted according to the specific characteristics of the transmission line. Such conventional non-linear transmission lines are used as pulse modulation circuits in which for example a suitable line could modify a flat top electrical input pulse to form any suitable shape radio frequency output signal.
A proposed implementation of the conventional transmission line of FIG. 1 is illustrated at FIG. 2 of the accompanying drawings in which the main capacitors 2 are thin metal plates located above an earth plane and insulated from the earth plane by a high voltage dielectric such as TEFLON sheet. The main capacitors 2 alternate from top to bottom of the arrangement as shown in FIG. 2 in which sequentially the main capacitors 2 are illustrated as 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d, 2e, 2f, 2g and 2h. Thus the main capacitor 2a is adjacent to capacitor 2c and not to the next capacitor 2b in the chain. The coupling or dispersive capacitors 1 are provided by placing metal plates above the capacitors 2 so that they provide capacitive coupling between alternate main capacitors 2. In such a proposed circuit the assembly is planar with thin sheets of conductors and insulators placed on top of each other to provide the required transmission line components.